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Canada’s top cops believe officers should be able to ticket people found with small amounts of marijuana to help reduce enforcement and court costs.

Last month, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police passed a resolution saying officers should have options other than laying criminal charges for pot, something opinion polls suggest would have widespread public support.

But the issue of writing tickets for pot hasn’t found its way onto the agenda of the Toronto Police Services Board, even though police charge thousands of people with pot possession each year — 4,600 in 2011 alone — and the force has a stated priority in 2013 of increasing the number of people charged with drug offences.

Instead, at Thursday’s board meeting, the TPS is suggesting city bylaws be amended so grow-op investigation costs are added to property tax bills, even if the homeowner in question was oblivious to the presence of the plants.

Since 2010, the TPS has recovered more than half of the $975,000 that it has invoiced to various “owners” for marijuana grow-op investigative costs dating back to 2008, according to a report submitted to the board.

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But substantially more money could be collected if the bylaw was changed to allow “for strict liability to the property owner and immediate transfer of the fee to the property tax roll,” it reads. “This would occur even if the “property owner” was not aware of the (marijuana growing) activities in their property, and so the issue of fairness would need to be considered.”

Councillor Michael Thompson, who was filling in as chair Thursday, said it’s all about “keeping the owners of property responsible for their property.”

The police service wants to recover “any specific fee that they think is associated with the whole enforcement process,” Thompson said. “I don’t think we’ve gone this far in terms of cost recovery.”

Thompson acknowledged that at a time when Liberal leader Justin Trudeau is making headlines by supporting marijuana legalization, and politicians are being asked about their pot use, there’s been little discussion about drug enforcement practices and policies in Canada’s largest city.

“It’s a political issue and people have been avoiding it. I do think the time is coming,” he said Wednesday.

“We need to figure out how we go forward because there’s a lot of wasted time, not only policing, court costs … it’s something that people do recreationally.”

While Mayor Rob Ford recently acknowledged he has smoked “a lot” of pot, Thompson said that was never the case with him.

“I don’t smoke marijuana, but for the record, I have,” he said. “I have asthma … but I’ve never bought it myself. But everybody I knew at university had it; they had a lot more money than I did.”

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